The circle garden is in full bloom and humming with honeybees and other native pollinators. Our guests are welcome (encouraged!) to take self guided walking tours around the farm during business hours.

Menu Vocabulary Word of the Week: pappardelle–pasta in the form of wide ribbons

duck agnolotti with carrots and caramelized onionspappardelle with GTF meatballs and ricotta salatapolenta with season’s best veggies and poached eggricotta stuffed eightball squash with salad greens and tomatosalad of rockfish, cucumbers, tomato, and arugulaMoroccan pork stew with chard and ceci

Much of what gets served in the Gathering Together Farm restaurant is the kind of thing that many home cooks wouldn’t want to bother putting together. It’s not exactly “fancy”, but a lot of it is fairly complicated. GTF’s head chef JC’s tarragon pickled carrots (often served with the pâte appetizer), however, are simple…and delicious.

This recipe starts with good, fresh carrots. (Y’all already know that you should never store carrots with the greens on because they get soft in a hurry that way, right?)

Tarragon is a strange and subtle herb, but it’s pleasant and does particularly well in this pickle brine.

This recipe is intentionally loose. The exact measurements are not important, but just to give you a little sense of the proportions, you can use about two farmers’ market bunches of carrots, one small bunch of tarragon, and 5 cloves of garlic. You’ll want to add salt to the brine first, and then balance out the saltiness with sugar to taste.

JC’s Tarragon Pickled Carrots

equal parts white wine vinegar and watersalt to tastesugar to tastecloves of garlic, peeledcarrots, peeled and cut on a biastarragon

Bring the vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and garlic to a boil. Pour enough of the hot brine over the carrots to completely cover them. Let cool and refrigerate. Pull out and discard the tarragon after 24 hours. Let the carrots sit in the brine for at least three days before serving.

These pickled carrots are not shelf stable. They should be stored in the refrigerator and eaten in a timely manner.